Recycling With Art In Mind

Here at Save That Stuff, Inc. we have been discussing starting up an artist in residence program.

As a locally-owned recycling and waste management company, we care to take an active role in finding imaginative ways of processing the materials Boston’s commercial sector disposes as waste. And many of the companies we work with also want to see something more happen to their discards than waste-to-energy or land-filling.

We have been inspired by artist in residence programs at other recycling centers around the nation. Both RAIR in Philadelphia, and Recology in San Francisco, engage artists to take a creative and critical approach to reusing materials that end up at local recycling centers.

Over the past 10 years, Save That Stuff has grown to take in a diverse range of materials for recycling and repurposing. Over the years, we’ve partnered with groups like Extras For Creative Reuse in an effort to extend the life of reusable materials that come to our facility.

A next step for us is to be a resource for an artistic community in the Greater Boston Area. We’d like to see some of the hard to recycle items we have serve artists with raw materials for creative works.

A few weeks ago, Save That Stuff hosted a tour for a group of students led by Jane D. Marsching, associate professor at the MassArt Studio Foundation. The students were enthusiastic about the range of materials that come through Save That Stuff.

MassArt students hold onto their recently-acquired treasures, accompanied by professor Jane D. Marsching and Save That Stuff president and founder Erik Levy.

Students discover a box of materials in Save That Stuff’s Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM): MassArt.

Erik: Everyone take as many as you want. You can come back.
Student 1: This is a Mecca right here.
Student 2: Yes!

We do not yet have the resources to offer space on-site for an actual residency program. We hope to start with small partnerships, where Save That Stuff will provide the materials to artists or other community organizations to create sculptures, public installations, and more! We’re excited to see how a program will evolve.